An Iconography of Trauma: The Fraught Identity of King Charles VI in Its Literary and Cultural Context

Abstract

Abstract:The madness of Charles VI of France is well documented, with various chroniclers having described his symptoms and erratic behaviour. In this article I consider books he is known to have taken out of the royal library and texts presented to him or commenting on his role in current affairs. I ask how these may have contributed to his paranoid fears and his delusions about his own identity and in what ways the visual imagery of his heraldic and personal emblems might have seemed to reflect his fears and fantasies. His reading of the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Fet des Romains and of the corruption and travails at the court of Pepin the Short as described in Berthe aux grants pies, as well as the various texts presenting the statue with feet of clay from Nebuchadnezzar's dream, could have contributed to his fears of assassination or betrayal from within his own court or to his delusion of having a breakable glass body. Likewise, his familiarity with the legend of Saint George and appeals made for him to sponsor a crusade bearing the saint's arms could have led to his adoption of George as the name he often claimed as his own. And his reading of bestiaries could have colored his emblems of the tiger and the peacock plume with further sinister associations. Consideration of this possible evidence provides intriguing insights into the workings of the afflicted king's mind during his psychotic episodes.